Rocky Mountain National Park is an American national park located approximately 89 km northwest of Denver in north-central Colorado, within the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.
The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and western slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the park's northwestern region. The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes and a wide variety of wildlife within various climates and environments, from wooded forests to mountain tundra.
The Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson on January 26, 1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations.
The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main automobile route, Trail Ridge Road, in the 1930s.
In 1976, UNESCO designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves.
In 2018, more than 4.5 million recreational visitors entered the park. The park is one of the most visited in the National Park System, ranking as the third most visited national park in 2015.
In 2019, the park saw record attendance yet again with 4,678,804 visitors, a 44% increase since 2012.
More information: National Park Service
The park has a total of five visitor centers, with park headquarters located at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center -a National Historic Landmark designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West.
National Forest lands surround the park on all sides, including Roosevelt National Forest to the north and east, Routt National Forest to the north and west, and Arapaho National Forest to the west and south, with the Indian Peaks Wilderness area located directly south of the park.
The history of Rocky Mountain National Park began when Paleo-Indians traveled along what is now Trail Ridge Road to hunt and forage for food. Ute and Arapaho people subsequently hunted and camped in the area.
In 1820, the Long Expedition, led by Stephen H. Long for whom Longs Peak was named, approached the Rockies via the Platte River. Settlers began arriving in the mid-1800s, displacing the Native Americans who mostly left the area voluntarily by 1860, while others were removed to reservations by 1878.
Lulu City, Dutchtown, and Gaskill in the Never Summer Mountains were established in the 1870s when prospectors came in search of gold and silver. The boom ended by 1883 with miners deserting their claims. The railroad reached Lyons, Colorado in 1881 and the Big Thompson Canyon Road -a section of U.S. Route 34 from Loveland to Estes Park- was completed in 1904.
The 1920s saw a boom in building lodges, including the Bear Lake Trail School, and roads in the park, culminating with the construction of Trail Ridge Road to Fall River Pass between 1929 and 1932, then to Grand Lake by 1938.
Prominent individuals in the effort to create a national park included Enos Mills from the Estes Park area, James Grafton Rogers from Denver, and J. Horace McFarland of Pennsylvania. The national park was established on January 26, 1915.
The Rocky Mountain National Park encompasses 1,074.28 km2 of federal land, with an additional 1,024.09 km2 of U.S. Forest Service wilderness adjoining the park boundaries. The Continental Divide runs generally north-south through the center of the park, with rivers and streams on the western side of the divide flowing toward the Pacific Ocean while those on the eastern side flow toward the Atlantic.
A geographical anomaly is found along the slopes of the Never Summer Mountains where the Continental Divide forms a horseshoe-shaped bend for about 9.7 km, heading from south-to-north but then curving sharply southward and westward out of the park.
The sharp bend results in streams on the eastern slopes of the range joining the headwaters of the Colorado River that flow south and west, eventually reaching the Pacific. Meanwhile, streams on the western slopes join rivers that flow north and then east and south, eventually reaching the Atlantic.
The headwaters of the Colorado River are located in the park's northwestern region. The park contains approximately 724 km of rivers and streams, 563 km of trails, and 150 lakes.
Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the highest national parks in the nation, with elevations from 2,396 to 4,346 m, the highest point of which is Longs Peak. Trail Ridge Road is the highest paved through-road in the country, with a peak elevation of 3,713 m.
More information: National Park Foundation
Sixty mountain peaks over 3,658 m high provide scenic vistas. On the north side of the park, the Mummy Range contains a number of thirteener peaks, including Hagues Peak, Mummy Mountain, Fairchild Mountain, Ypsilon Mountain, and Mount Chiquita. Several small glaciers and permanent snowfields are found in the high mountain cirques.
There are five regions, or geographical zones, within the park.
Precambrian metamorphic rock formed the core of the North American continent during the Precambrian eon 4.5-1 billion years ago. During the Paleozoic era, western North America was submerged beneath a shallow sea, with a seabed composed of limestone and dolomite deposits many kilometers thick.
Pikes Peak granite formed during the late Precambrian eon, continuing well into the Paleozoic era, when mass quantities of molten rock flowed, amalgamated, and formed the continents about 1 billion-300 million years ago. Concurrently, in the period from 500 to 300 million years ago, the region began to sink while lime and mud sediments were deposited in the vacated space. Eroded granite produced sand particles that formed strata -layers of sediment- in the sinking basin.
About 300 million years ago, the land was uplifted creating the ancestral Rocky Mountains. Fountain Formation was deposited during the Pennsylvanian period of the Paleozoic era, 290–296 million years ago.
Over the next 150 million years, the mountains uplifted, continued to erode, and covered themselves in their own sediment. Wind, gravity, rainwater, snow, and glacial ice eroded the granite mountains over geologic time scales. The Ancestral Rockies were eventually buried under subsequent strata.
More information: World Atlas
I live in the shadow of some of the greatest
climate change the world has ever seen.
It's called the Rocky Mountains.
When the glaciers went back.
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